Money

Money, a commodity accepted by general consent as a medium of economic exchange. It is the medium in which prices and values are expressed; as currency, it circulates anonymously from person to person and country to country, thus facilitating trade, and it is the principal measure of wealth.

Various denominations of the euro currency.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The subject of money has fascinated people from the time of Aristotle to the present day. The piece of paper labeled 1 dollar, 10 euros, 100 yuan, or 1,000 yen is little different, as paper, from a piece of the same size torn from a newspaper or magazine, yet it will enable its bearer to command some measure of food, drink, clothing, and the remaining goods of life while the other is fit only to light the fire. Whence the difference? The easy answer, and the right one, is that modern money is a social contrivance. People accept money as such because they know that others will. This common knowledge makes the pieces of paper valuable because everyone thinks they are, and everyone thinks they are because in his or her experience money has always been accepted in exchange for valuable goods, assets, or services. At bottom money is, then, a social convention, but a convention of uncommon strength that people will abide by even under extreme provocation. The strength of the convention is, of course, what enables governments to profit by inflating (increasing the quantity of) the currency. But it is not indestructible. When great increases occur in the quantity of these pieces of paper—as they have during and after wars—money may be seen to be, after all, no more than pieces of paper. If the social arrangement that sustains money as a medium of exchange breaks down, people will then seek substitutes—like the cigarettes and cognac that for a time served as the medium of exchange in Germany after World War II. New money may substitute for old under less extreme conditions. In many countries with a history of high inflation, such as Argentina, Israel, or Russia, prices may be quoted in a different currency, such as the U.S. dollar, because the dollar has more stable value than the local currency. Furthermore, the country’s residents accept the dollar as a medium of exchange because it is well-known and offers more stable purchasing power than local money.

Functions of money

The basic function of money is to enable buying to be separated from selling, thus permitting trade to take place without the so-called double coincidence of barter. In principle, credit could perform this function, but, before extending credit, the seller would want to know about the prospects of repayment. That requires much more information about the buyer and imposes costs of information and verification that the use of money avoids.

If a person has something to sell and wants something else in return, the use of money avoids the need to search for someone able and willing to make the desired exchange of items. The person can sell the surplus item for general purchasing power—that is, “money”—to anyone who wants to buy it and then use the proceeds to buy the desired item from anyone who wants to sell it.

The importance of this function of money is dramatically illustrated by the experience of Germany just after World War II, when paper money was rendered largely useless because of price controls that were enforced effectively by the American, French, and British armies of occupation. Money rapidly lost its value. People were unwilling to exchange real goods for Germany’s depreciating currency. They resorted to barter or to other inefficient money substitutes (such as cigarettes). Price controls reduced incentives to produce. The country’s economic output fell by half. Later the German “economic miracle” that took root just after 1948 reflected, in part, a currency reform instituted by the occupation authorities that replaced depreciating money with money of stable value. At the same time, the reform eliminated all price controls, thereby permitting a money economy to replace a barter economy.

These examples have shown the “medium of exchange” function of money. Separation of the act of sale from the act of purchase requires the existence of something that will be generally accepted in payment. But there must also be something that can serve as a temporary store of purchasing power, in which the seller holds the proceeds in the interim between the sale and the subsequent purchase or from which the buyer can extract the general purchasing power with which to pay for what is bought. This is called the “asset” function of money.

Varieties of money

Anything can serve as money that habit or social convention and successful experience endow with the quality of general acceptability, and a variety of items have so served—from the wampum (beads made from shells) of American Indians, to cowries (brightly coloured shells) in India, to whales’ teeth among the Fijians, to tobacco among early colonists in North America, to large stone disks on the Pacific island of Yap, to cigarettes in post-World War II Germany and in prisons the world over. In fact, the wide use of cattle as money in primitive times survives in the word pecuniary, which comes from the Latin pecus, meaning cattle. The development of money has been marked by repeated innovations in the objects used as money.

Wampum beads made from shells by the Montauk people of North America.Nativestock Pictures

Metallic money

Metals have been used as money throughout history. As Aristotle observed, the various necessities of life are not easily carried about; hence people agreed to employ in their dealings with each other something that was intrinsically useful and easily applicable to the purposes of life—for example, iron, silver, and the like. The value of the metal was at first measured by weight, but in time governments or sovereigns put a stamp upon it to avoid the trouble of weighing it and to make the value known at sight.

The use of metal for money can be traced back to Babylon more than 2000 years bc, but standardization and certification in the form of coinage did not occur except perhaps in isolated instances until the 7th century bc. Historians generally ascribe the first use of coined money to Croesus, king of Lydia, a state in Anatolia. The earliest coins were made of electrum, a natural mixture of gold and silver, and were crude, bean-shaped ingots bearing a primitive punch mark certifying to either weight or fineness or both.

The use of coins enabled payment to be by “tale,” or count, rather than weight, greatly facilitating commerce. But this in turn encouraged “clipping” (shaving off tiny slivers from the sides or edges of coins) and “sweating” (shaking a bunch of coins together in a leather bag and collecting the dust that was thereby knocked off) in the hope of passing on the lighter coin at its face value. The resulting economic situation was described by Gresham’s law (that “bad money drives out good” when there is a fixed rate of exchange between them): heavy, good coins were held for their metallic value, while light coins were passed on to others. In time the coins became lighter and lighter and prices higher and higher. As a means of correcting this problem, payment by weight would be resumed for large transactions, and there would be pressure for recoinage. These particular defects were largely ended by the “milling” of coins (making serrations around the circumference of a coin), which began in the late 17th century.

A more serious problem occurred when the sovereign would attempt to benefit from the monopoly of coinage. In this respect, Greek and Roman experience offers an interesting contrast. Solon, on taking office in Athens in 594 bc, did institute a partial debasement of the currency. For the next four centuries (until the absorption of Greece into the Roman Empire) the Athenian drachma had an almost constant silver content (67 grains of fine silver until Alexander, 65 grains thereafter) and became the standard coin of trade in Greece and in much of Asia and Europe as well. Even after the Roman conquest of the Mediterranean peninsula in roughly the 2nd century bc, the drachma continued to be minted and widely used.

The Roman experience was very different. Not long after the silver denarius, patterned after the Greek drachma, was introduced about 212 bc, the prior copper coinage (aes, or libra) began to be debased until, by the onset of the empire, its weight had been reduced from 1 pound (about 450 grams) to half an ounce (about 15 grams). By contrast the silver denarius and the gold aureus (introduced about 87 bc) suffered only minor debasement until the time of Nero (ad 54), when almost continuous tampering with the coinage began. The metal content of the gold and silver coins was reduced, while the proportion of alloy was increased to three-fourths or more of its weight. Debasement in Rome (as ever since) used the state’s profit from money creation to cover its inability or unwillingness to finance its expenditures through explicit taxes. But the debasement in turn raised prices, worsened Rome’s economic situation, and contributed to the collapse of the empire.

Paper money

Experience had shown that carrying large quantities of gold, silver, or other metals proved inconvenient and risked loss or theft. The first use of paper money occurred in China more than 1,000 years ago. By the late 18th and early 19th centuries paper money and banknotes had spread to other parts of the world. The bulk of the money in use came to consist not of actual gold or silver but of fiduciary money—promises to pay specified amounts of gold and silver. These promises were initially issued by individuals or companies as banknotes or as the transferable book entries that came to be called deposits. Although deposits and banknotes began as claims to gold or silver on deposit at a bank or with a merchant, this later changed. Knowing that everyone would not claim his or her balance at once, the banker (or merchant) could issue more claims to the gold and silver than the amount held in safekeeping. Bankers could then invest the difference or lend it at interest. In periods of distress, however, when borrowers did not repay their loans or in case of overissue, the banks could fail.

Gradually, governments assumed a supervisory role. They specified legal tender, defining the type of payment that legally discharged a debt when offered to the creditor and that could be used to pay taxes. Governments also set the weight and metallic composition of coins. Later they replaced fiduciary paper money—promises to pay in gold or silver—with fiat paper money—that is, notes that are issued on the “fiat” of the sovereign government, are specified to be so many dollars, pounds, or yen, etc., and are legal tender but are not promises to pay something else.

The first large-scale issue of paper money in a Western country occurred in France in the early 18th century. Subsequently, the French Revolutionary government issued assignats from 1789 to 1796. Similarly, the American colonies and later the Continental Congress issued bills of credit that could be used in making payments. Yet these and other early experiments gave fiat money a deservedly bad name. The money was overissued, and prices rose drastically until the money became worthless or was redeemed in metallic money (or promises to pay metallic money) at a small fraction of its initial value.

Subsequent issues of fiat money in the major countries during the 19th century were temporary departures from a metallic standard. In Great Britain, for example, the government suspended payment of gold for all outstanding banknotes during the Napoleonic Wars (1797–1815). To finance the war, the government issued fiat paper money. Prices in Great Britain doubled as a result, and gold coin and bullion became more expensive in terms of paper. To restore the gold standard at the former gold price, the government deflated the price level by reducing the quantity of money. In 1821 Great Britain restored the gold standard. Similarly, during the American Civil War the U.S. government suspended convertibility of Union currency (greenbacks) into specie (gold or silver coin), and resumption did not occur until 1879 (seespecie payment). At its peak in 1864, the greenback price of gold, nominally equivalent to $100, reached more than $250.

Episodes of this kind, which were repeated in many countries, convinced the public that war brings inflation and that the aftermath of war brings deflation and depression. This sequence is not inevitable. It reflected 19th-century experience under metallic money standards. Typically, wars required increased government spending and budget deficits. Governments suspended the metallic (gold) standard and financed their deficits by borrowing and printing paper money. Prices rose.

Throughout history, the price of gold would be far above its prewar value when wartime spending and inflation ended. To restore the metallic standard to the prewar price of gold in paper money, prices quoted in paper money had to fall. The alternative was to accept the increased price of gold in paper money by devaluing the currency (that is, reducing money’s purchasing power). After World War I, the British and the United States governments forced prices to fall, but many other countries devalued their currencies against gold. After World War II, all major countries accepted the higher wartime price level, and most devalued their currencies to avoid deflation and depression.

The widespread use of paper money brought other problems. Since the cost of producing paper money is far lower than its exchange value, forgery is common (it cost about 4 cents to produce one piece of U.S. paper currency in 1999). Later the development of copying machines necessitated changes in paper and the use of metallic strips and other devices to make forgery more difficult. In addition, the use of machines to identify, count, or change currency increased the need for tests to identify genuine currency.

Standards of value

In the Middle Ages, when money consisted primarily of coins, silver and gold coins circulated simultaneously. As governments came increasingly to take over the coinage and especially as fiduciary money was introduced, they specified their nominal (face value) monetary units in terms of fixed weights of either silver or gold. Some adopted a national bimetallic standard, with fixed weights for both gold and silver based on their relative values on a given date—for example, 15 ounces of silver equal 1 ounce of gold (seebimetallism). As the prices changed, the phenomenon associated with Gresham’s law assured that the bimetallic standard degenerated into a monometallic standard. If, for example, the quantity of silver designated as the monetary equivalent of 1 ounce of gold (15 to 1) was less than the quantity that could be purchased in the market for 1 ounce of gold (say 16 to 1), no one would bring gold to be coined. Holders of gold could instead profit by buying silver in the market, receiving 16 ounces for each ounce of gold; they would then take 15 ounces of silver to the mint to be coined and accept payment in gold.

Continuing this profitable exchange drained gold from the mint, leaving the mint with silver coinage. In this example silver, the cheaper metal in the market, “drove out” gold and became the standard. This happened in most of the countries of Europe, so that by the early 19th century all were effectively on a silver standard. In Britain, on the other hand, the ratio established in the 18th century on the advice of Sir Isaac Newton, then serving as master of the mint, overvalued gold and therefore led to an effective gold standard. In the United States a ratio of 15 ounces of silver to 1 ounce of gold was set in 1792. This ratio overvalued silver, so silver became the standard. Then in 1834 the ratio was altered to 16 to 1, which overvalued gold, so gold again became the standard.

The great gold discoveries in California and Australia in the 1840s and ’50s produced a temporary decline in the value of gold in terms of silver. This price change, plus the dominance of Britain in international finance, led to a widespread shift from a silver standard to a gold standard. Germany adopted gold as its standard in 1871–73, the Latin Monetary Union (France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland) did so in 1873–74, and the Scandinavian Union (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) and the Netherlands followed in 1875–76. By the final decades of the century, silver remained dominant only in the Far East (China, in particular). Elsewhere the gold standard reigned. (See alsoFree Silver Movement.)

The early 20th century was the great era of the international gold standard. Gold coins circulated in most of the world; paper money, whether issued by private banks or by governments, was convertible on demand into gold coins or gold bullion at an official price (with perhaps the addition of a small fee), while bank deposits were convertible into either gold coin or paper currency that was itself convertible into gold. In a few countries a minor variant prevailed—the so-called gold exchange standard, under which a country’s reserves included not only gold but also currencies of other countries that were convertible into gold. Currencies were exchanged at a fixed price into the currency of another country (usually the British pound sterling) that was itself convertible into gold.

The prevalence of the gold standard meant that there was, in effect, a single world money called by different names in different countries. A U.S. dollar, for example, was defined as 23.22 grains of pure gold (25.8 grains of gold 9/10 fine). A British pound sterling was defined as 113.00 grains of pure gold (123.274 grains of gold 11/12 fine). Accordingly, 1 British pound equaled 4.8665 U.S. dollars (113.00/23.22) at the official parity. The actual exchange rate could deviate from this value only by an amount that corresponded to the cost of shipping gold. If the price of the pound sterling in terms of dollars greatly exceeded this parity price in the foreign exchange market, someone in New York City who had a debt to pay in London might find that, rather than buying the needed pounds on the market, it was cheaper to get gold for dollars at a bank or from the U.S. subtreasury, ship the gold to London, and get pounds for the gold from the Bank of England. The potential for such an exchange set an upper limit to the exchange rate. Similarly, the cost of shipping gold from Britain to the United States set a lower limit. These limits were known as the gold points.

Under such an international gold standard, the quantity of money in each country was determined by an adjustment process known as the price-specie-flow adjustment mechanism. This process, analyzed by 18th- and 19th-century economists such as David Hume, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Thornton, occurred as follows: a rise in a particular country’s quantity of money would tend to raise prices in that country relative to prices in other countries. This rise in prices would consequently discourage exports while encouraging imports. The decreased supply of foreign currency (from the sale of fewer exports) plus the increased demand for foreign currency (to pay for imports) would tend to raise the price of foreign currency in terms of domestic currency. As soon as this price hit the upper gold point, gold would be shipped out of the country to other countries. The decline in the amount of gold would produce in turn a reduction in the total amount of money, because banks and government institutions, seeing their gold reserves decline, would want to protect themselves against further demands by reducing the claims against gold that were outstanding. This would tend to lower prices at home. The influx of gold abroad would have the opposite effect, increasing the quantity of money there and raising prices. These adjustments would continue until the gold flow ceased or was reversed.

Precisely the same mechanism operates within a unified currency area. That mechanism determines how much money there is in Illinois compared with how much there is in other U.S. states or how much there is in Wales compared with how much there is in other parts of the United Kingdom. Because the gold standard was so prevalent in the early 20th century, most of the commercial world operated as a unified currency area. One advantage of such widespread adherence to the gold standard was its ability to limit a national government’s power to engage in irresponsible monetary expansion. This was also its great disadvantage. In an era of big government and of full-employment policies, a real gold standard would tie the hands of governments in one of the most important areas of policy—that of monetary policy.

The decline of gold

World War I effectively ended the real international gold standard. Most belligerent nations suspended the free convertibility of gold. The United States, even after its entry into the war, maintained convertibility but embargoed gold exports. For a few years after the end of the war, most countries had inconvertible national paper standards—inconvertible in that paper money was not convertible into gold or silver. The exchange rate between any two currencies was a market rate that fluctuated from time to time. This was regarded as a temporary phenomenon, like the British suspension of gold payments during the Napoleonic era or the U.S. suspension during the Civil War greenback period (seeGreenback movement). The great aim was a restoration of the prewar gold standard. Since price levels had increased in all countries during the war, countries had to choose deflation or devaluation to restore the gold standard. This effort dominated monetary developments during the 1920s.

Britain, still a major financial power, chose deflation. Winston Churchill, chancellor of the Exchequer in 1925, decided to follow prevailing financial opinion and adopt the prewar parity (i.e., to define a pound sterling once again as equal to 123.274 grains of gold 11/12 fine). This produced exchange rates that, at the existing prices in Britain, overvalued the pound and so tended to produce gold outflows, especially after France chose devaluation and returned to gold in 1928 at a parity that undervalued the franc. By 1929 the important currencies of the world, and most of the less important ones, were again linked to gold.

The gold standard that was restored, however, was a far cry from the prewar gold standard. The establishment of the Federal Reserve System in the United States in 1913 introduced an additional link in the international specie-flow mechanism. That mechanism no longer operated automatically. It operated only if the Federal Reserve chose to let it do so, and the Federal Reserve did not so choose; to prevent domestic prices from rising, it offset the effect on the quantity of money resulting from an increase in gold. (In effect it “sterilized” the monetary effect.)

France made a similar choice. With the franc undervalued, gold flowed to France. The French government sold the foreign exchange for gold, draining gold from Britain and other gold standard countries. The two countries receiving gold, the United States and France, did not permit gold inflows to raise their price levels. Countries that lost gold had to deflate. Thus, the gold exchange standard forced deflation and unemployment on much of the world economy. By the summer of 1929, recessions were under way in Great Britain and Germany. In August the United States joined the recession that became the Great Depression.

In 1931 Japan and Great Britain left the gold standard, followed by the Scandinavian countries and many of the countries in the British Empire, including Canada. The United States followed in 1933, restoring a fixed—but higher—dollar price for gold, $35 an ounce in January 1934, but barring U.S. citizens from owning gold. France, Switzerland, Italy, and Belgium left the gold standard in 1936. Although it was not clear at the time, that was the end of the gold standard.

During World War II, Great Britain and the United States outlined the postwar monetary system. Their plan, approved by more than 40 countries at the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944, aimed to correct the perceived deficiencies of the interwar gold exchange standard. These included the volatility of floating exchange rates, the inflexibility of fixed exchange rates, and reliance on an adjustment mechanism for countries with payment surpluses or deficits; these problems were often resolved by recession and deflation in deficit countries coupled with expansion and inflation in surplus countries. The agreement that resulted from the conference led to the creation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which countries joined by paying a subscription. Members agreed to maintain a system of fixed but adjustable exchange rates. Countries with payment deficits could borrow from the fund, while those with surpluses would lend. If deficits or surpluses persisted, the agreement provided for changes in exchange rates. The IMF began operations in 1947, with the U.S. dollar serving as the fund’s reserve currency and the price of gold fixed at $35 per ounce. The U.S. agreed to maintain that price by buying or selling gold.

Postwar recovery, low inflation, growth of trade and payments, and the buildup of international reserves in industrial countries permitted the new system to come into full operation at the end of 1958. Although a vestigial tie to gold remained with the gold price staying at $35 per ounce, the Bretton Woods system essentially put the market economies of the world on a dollar standard—in other words, the U.S. dollar served as the world’s principal currency, and countries held most of their reserves in interest-bearing dollar securities.

The dollar became the most widely used currency in international trade, even in trade between countries other than the United States. It was the unit in which countries expressed their exchange rate. Countries maintained their “official” exchange rates by buying and selling U.S. dollars and held dollars as their primary reserve currency for that purpose. The existence of a dollar standard did not prevent other countries from changing their exchange rates, just as the gold standard did not prevent other currencies from “devaluing” or “appreciating” in terms of gold. In time, however, the fixed price of gold became increasingly difficult for the United States to maintain. Many countries devalued or revalued their currencies, including major economic powers such as the United Kingdom (in 1967), Germany, and France (both in 1969). Yet in practice the United States was not free to determine its own exchange rate or its balance of payments position. Monetary expansion in the United States provided reserves for other countries; monetary contraction absorbed reserves. Central banks could convert dollars into gold, and they did, especially in the early years. As the stock of dollars held by central banks outside the United States rose and the U.S. gold stock dwindled, the United States could not honour its commitment to convert gold into dollars at the fixed rate of $35 per ounce. The Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates appeared doomed. Governments and central banks tried for years to find a way to extend its life, but they could not agree on a solution. The end came on Aug. 15, 1971, when Pres. Richard M. Nixon announced that the United States would no longer sell gold.

After Bretton Woods

This breakdown of the fixed exchange rate system ended each country’s obligation to maintain a fixed price for its currency against gold or other currencies. Under Bretton Woods, countries had bought when the exchange rate fell and sold when it rose; now national currencies floated, meaning that the exchange rate rose or fell with market demand. If the exchange rate appreciated, buyers received fewer units of domestic money in exchange for a unit of their own currency. Purchasers of domestic goods and assets then faced higher prices. Conversely, if the currency depreciated, domestic goods and assets became cheaper for foreigners. Countries that were heavily dependent on foreign trade disliked the frequent changes in price and costs under the new floating rates. Governments or their central banks often intervened to slow nominal (market) exchange rate changes. Historically, however, these interventions have been effective only against temporary changes.

In the long run, a country’s exchange rate depends on such fundamental factors as relative productivity growth, opportunities for investment, the public’s willingness to save, and monetary and fiscal policies. These fundamental factors are at work whether the country has a fixed or a floating exchange rate and whether the authorities intervene to adjust the exchange rate or slow its changes. As long as markets for goods, services, assets, and foreign exchange remain open, the country must adjust.

The principal difference between fixed and floating exchange rates is how the country adjusts. With fixed exchange rates, adjustment occurs mainly by changing costs and prices of the myriad commodities that a country produces and consumes. Under floating exchange rates, the adjustment occurs mainly by changing the nominal exchange rate. For example, if Brazil’s monetary policy increases Brazilian inflation, domestic prices of shoes, cocoa, and almost everything else will rise. With a fixed exchange rate, the price rise deters exports and purchases by foreigners. Demand shifts from Brazil to other countries, lowering demand and reducing payments for Brazilian products. This decreases Brazil’s money stock. The reduction in money and the fall in demand slow the Brazilian economy, thereby reducing Brazilian prices. With a floating exchange rate, however, the adjustment comes about by reducing the demand for Brazilian currency and depreciating the exchange rate, thereby reducing the prices paid by foreigners.

Adjustment comes in many other ways. In this hypothetical example, Brazilians may decide to invest more abroad, or foreigners may decide to invest less in Brazil. The long-run outcome will be the same, however, because buyers and sellers do not care about the nominal exchange rate (the official rate set by national governments under a fixed exchange rate or set by the market under floating rates). What matters is the so-called real exchange rate—the nominal exchange rate adjusted by prices at home and abroad. The buyer of Brazilian shoes in England cares only about the cost of the shoes in local currency—that is, British pounds. The Brazilian price of shoes is multiplied by the exchange rate to get the U.K. price. Under floating exchange rates, the exchange rate adjusts to keep a country’s commodities competitive on the world market.

After the Bretton Woods system ended in 1973, most countries allowed their currencies to float, but this situation soon changed. Generally, small countries with relatively large trade sectors disliked floating rates. They wanted to avoid the often transitory but sometimes large changes in prices and costs arising in the foreign exchange market. Many of the smaller Asian economies, along with countries in Central America and the Caribbean, fixed their exchange rates to the U.S. dollar. Countries such as the Netherlands and Austria, both of which traded heavily with West Germany, soon fixed their exchange rates to the German mark. These countries ceased conducting independent central bank policy, so that when the Bundesbank or the U.S. Federal Reserve changed interest rates, countries that fixed their exchange rate to the mark or the dollar changed their interest rates as well.

A country on a fixed exchange rate sacrifices independent monetary policy. In some cases this may be a necessary sacrifice, because a small country that is open to external trade has little scope for independent monetary policy. It cannot influence most of the prices at which its citizens buy and sell. If its central bank or government inflates, its currency depreciates to bring its domestic prices back to equivalent world market levels. Even a large country cannot maintain an independent monetary policy if its exchange rate is fixed and its capital market remains open to inflows and outflows. Given the reduced reliance on capital controls, many countries abandoned fixed exchange rates in the 1980s as a means of preserving some power over domestic monetary policy. This trend reversed somewhat toward the end of the 20th century.

Large economies such as those of the United States, Japan, and Great Britain continued to float their currencies, as did Switzerland and Canada—both relatively small economies that have preferred to retain some influence over domestic monetary conditions. Hong Kong made the opposite choice. Although it was a British colony at the time and later a part of China, it chose to fix its exchange rate to the U.S. dollar. The method it revived was a 19th-century system known as a currency board. In such a case there is no central bank and the exchange rate is fixed. Local banks increase the number of Hong Kong dollars only when they receive additional U.S. dollars, and they reduce the stock of Hong Kong dollars when U.S. dollar holdings decline. Hong Kong’s experience with its currency board encouraged a few, mainly small countries to follow its lead. Some stepped even further away from autonomous policy by adopting the U.S. dollar as their domestic currency. The most notable change of this general type was the decision by most of the continental European countries to surrender their local currencies in exchange for a new common currency, the euro.

Western European countries have traditionally done much of their trading with each other. Soon after the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system, some of these countries experimented with fixed exchange rates within their group. Before 1997, however, all such attempts had failed within a few years of their inception. Inter-European trade continued to expand under the aegis of the European Community (EC). Growth of trade fostered European economic integration and encouraged steps toward political integration in addition to the free exchange of goods, labour, and finance. In 1991, 12 of the 15 nations signing the Treaty on European Union (the Maastricht Treaty) had agreed to a decade of adjustment toward a single currency. The treaty took effect in 1993. Exchange rates were fixed “permanently and irrevocably” for the participating countries (tellingly, the treaty did not provide for a country’s withdrawal from the system). In 1995 the new currency was named the “euro.”

European Union: euro zoneMap indicating which members of the European Union use the euro as their national currency. The Greek Cypriot sector of Cyprus (not shown) also has adopted the euro.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The European Central Bank (ECB) was established in 1998 in Frankfurt, Germany, with a mandate from member governments to maintain price stability. Each member country receives a seat on the board of the ECB. In part because Germany sacrificed its dominant role in European monetary policy, the new arrangements provided increased opportunity for smaller countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria to determine policy. However, 3 of the then 15 member states of the European Union (EU)—Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom—decided either to remain outside or to delay entry into monetary union.

The new system began operation on Jan. 1, 1999. For its first three years the euro functioned as a unit of account but not a medium of exchange. During this transition period the values of debts, assets, and prices of goods and services were expressed in euros as well as in the local currency. In January 2002, euro notes and coins began circulating, replacing national currencies such as the French franc, German mark, or Italian lira. The euro floated against all nonmember currencies.

A five-euro bill atop a stack of paper money from various European countries.National Geographic/Getty Images